The Lost Lunar Baedeker (10 page)

Madonnas are islands in memory

for earthly mothers, who having begotten,

in early security, heroes of the skies,

on forsaken knees

crave for a moment it be forgotten

that skies once ovational

with celestial oboes

for the Heavenly Celebrities

are skies in clamour

of deathly celerities,

the horror

of diving obituaries

under flowers of fire.

Ephemerid

The Eternal is sustained by serial metamorphosis,

even so Beauty is

metamorphosis surprises!

Low in shadow

of the El's

arboreal iron

some aerial, unbeknown

eerie-form

of dual mobility,

having long wing, an unbelievable

imp-fly

soars

trailing

a horizontal gauze;

trudges, urges,

crouches;

its knees' apexes, a roach's.

Humanly sized

a magnified imago

towing in twofold progress

nameless nostalgia through slush,

enigma along gloom.

As always, has a wisp of whiteness loveliness

to lift the eyelids;

to whisper of subvisual resources

in the uncolor of the unknown.

Across indefinite curbstones

focus

this creature of fictitious

faery,

this eccentric of traffic:

after all

the illicit insect

is only

a little girl—

—a long white muslin curtain,

tied to her pull-over,

afloat from her,

she pilots an ideal load

taking a heavy child

for a ride

in a fragile,

stalling

doll's perambulator.

The dilating wing

billows from her shoulders

the wondering of windows,

mildews, as the soul does,

penury

with dream.

Ponder this

metamorphosis:

Infancy's

kidnap into Fantasia.

Chiffon Velours

She is sere.

Her features,

verging on a shriek

reviling age,

flee from death in odd directions

somehow retained by a web of wrinkles.

The site of vanished breasts

is marked by a safety-pin.

Rigid

at rest against the corner-stone

of a department store.

Hers alone to model

the last creation,

original design

of destitution.

Clothed in memorial scraps

skimpy even for a skeleton.

Trimmed with one sudden burst

of flowery cotton

half her black skirt

glows as a soiled mirror;

reflects the gutter—

a yard of chiffon velours.

Property of Pigeons

Pigeons doze,

or rouse

their striped crescendos

of grey rainbow

a living frieze on the shallow

sill of a factory window.

Pigeons arise,

alight

on vertical bases

of civic brick

whitened with avalanches

of their innocent excrements

as if an angel had been sick;

all that is shown to us

of bird-economies,

financeless,

inobvious as the disposal

of their corpses.

Pigeons make irritant, alluring

music;

quilled solfeggios

of shrill wings winnowing

their rejoicing, cooing

fanaticism for wooing.

Their dolce voices

dotage.

Too and fro, frowardly they live

burnishing each other's

gorgeous halters

in the feathery drive

of preliminaries

to their marriages.

Pigeons disappear,

their claws, a coral landing-gear,

dive for the altar-stair

to their privacies—

a slice of concrete

fallen on a cornice

leading into darkness;

the slit adjacence of houses

where the caressive dusts,

the residue of furnaces

upholster the gossamer

festoons of intestate spiders

for nuptial furniture

Pigeons through some conjurous procedure

appear to reappear

upon the altar-stair

at startling instants

in the immature

torsos of their giant infants;

timid and unflown

stark of plume

naive in nativity

to peer into a vast transparency.

Photo After Pogrom

Arrangement by rage

of human rubble

the false-eternal statues of the slain

until they putrify.

Tossed on a pile of dead,

one woman,

her body hacked to utter beauty

oddly by murder,

attains the absolute smile

of dispossession:

the marble pause before the extinct haven

Death's drear

erasure of fear,

the unassumed

composure

the purposeless peace

sealing the faces

of corpses—

Corpses are virgin.

Time-Bomb

The   present   moment

is   an   explosion   ,

a   scission

of   past   and   future

leaving

those   valorous   disreputables   ,

the   ruins   ,

sentinels

in   an   unknown   dawn

strewn   with   prophecy   .

Only   the   momentary

goggle   of   death

fixes   the   fugitive

momentum   .

Omen of Victory

Women in uniform

relaxed for tea

under a shady garden tree

discover

a dove's feather

fallen in the sugar.

Film-Face

As the Gods sat on Olympus

above travail of clouds

it dominates the garbage-barge

loaded with clouds

of sanitation's chaos;

the enduring face of,

the ruined body of,

the poor people

on Marie Dressler.

Faun Fare

Surreptitious fanfare

of unadams

amingle with ouradams

a seemingly uniform guesthood

met in unsolemn sociability

the amiable scuffle

of cocktail party.

Hooveless fauns

their goat-haunch

discard to antiquity

their hairiness

woven to our worsted.

Most smiles are similes

some

almost imperceptibly

simper to mystery—

As were the tail of the eye

lidded with unlisted likings

on ocular trail

of invitation

to untypical trysts

As were the tail of the eye

feeling for fallacious Foci

a Flitting tongue

licking its luminous chops

o'er tit-bits of other tastes

undue

to the apple

the devil

delivered to Eve.

Neo-Fauns

Whom no forestal feminae

need flee

Altered is the prey.

Of priceless use to civilization

You faun

are balm

to night-club addict

undercover-virgin

for whom

Adonis as escort

—obliging her prestige

as cosmetics her cheek—

is a must.

Faun in you

may she trust

to stage no thrust

of Sabine rape

behind the chauffeur's back

O unisex

Black marketing Amor

with your intermuscular caress

of wrestling entry

to Felicity's

unsentinelled

Arcana.

Your something-for-nothing

Variance

to infertile “Sin.”

You

dual yet single

Votaries of Venuseros

As in Athens

So in Manhattan

Erosvenus evoes

his-her worshipper

or whispers

Eros is ours

for is not

Eros

forever overall

a male?

Or implores

for fauns' ease.

Quiet please!

As mondial calliopes

Blaring the bisexual norm

foment the Fauns'

allergy to diapers.

Letters of the Unliving

The present implies presence

thus

unauthorized by the present

these letters are left authorless—

have lost all origin

since the inscribing hand

lost life — — —

The hoarseness of the past

creaks

from creased leaves

covered with unwritten writing

since death's erasure

of the writer — — —

of the lover — — —

Well chosen and so ill-relinquished

the husband heartsease

acme of communion

who made euphonious

our esoteric universe

Ego's oasis

in the sole companion.

As erst my body and my reason

you left to the drought of your dying:

the longing and the lack

when the racked creature

shouted

to an unanswering hiatus

“reunite us”

— — — till slyly — — soporose

patience creeps up on passion.

while the exhilarance of youth

dwindles until out of season

and agony

ends in an equal grave

with ecstasy.

An uneasy mist

rises from this calligraphy of recollection

your documented terror of dementia

due to some merely earthly absence

This package of ago

creaks with the horror of echo

out of void

the bloom of beloving

decoyed

to decay, by the finger

of Hazard the swindler

The deathly handler

left no post-mortem mask — — —

only a callous earth made mouldy

your face excelling Adonis

Posing the extreme enigma

in my Bewilderness

Can whom has ceased to be

Ever have had existence

No longer any you as addresser

there is no addressee

to dally with defunct reality

Can one who still has being

be inexistent?

I am become

dumb

in answer

to your dead language of amor

Diminuendo

of life's imposture

implies no possible retrial

By my so now-while self

of my cloud-corpse

Beshadowing your shroud

the one I was with you

inhumed in chasms,

craters torn by atomic emotion

among chaos

No creator

reconstrues scar-tissue

to shine as birth-star.

Only to my sub-cerebral surprise

at last on blasé sorrow

dawns an iota of disgust

for life's intemperance — — —

“As once you were”

with-hold your ghostly reference

to the sweet once were we— —

O leave me

my final illiteracy

of memory's languour

my preference

to drift in lenient coma

an older Ophelia

on Lethe

Hot Cross Bum

Beyond a hell-vermilion

curtain of neon

lies the Bowery

a lurid lane

leading misfortune's monsters

the human … race

altered to irrhythmic stagger

along the alcoholic's

exit to Ecstasia.

Impersonal as wind astray

confluent tides of swarm

loiter

in non-resistance calm

through dilatory

night and day

crowds of the choicelessly corrupted

disoriented

The Bowery sanctuary's

invasion by the vanquished

… in lazy anguish

 

Masquerade of Inexpressionism

inideate shutter

halting the bon-fire of the soul

from kindling the eyes

peep-holes of delight's observatory

stoppled by hinterland stupor

lunging a sullen blow on sunlight

indirective

abortive ocular

reception of the objective

Bum-bungling of actuality

exchanging

an inobvious real

for over-obvious irreal

 

faces of Inferno

peering from shock-absorbent

torsos

alternate with raffish saints'

eleemosynary innocence

Blowsy angels

lief to leer

upon crystal horizons

shelves of liquiescent ‘beef'
*

—staple fodder of their fanciful fall

a Brilliance all of bottles

pouring a benison

of internal rain

leaving a rainbow in your brain

Hoary rovers

ignoring all but despicable directions,

shift through intentional trend of busymen

Their sailing, flailing limbs

of disequilibrium

clutching at wobbly banisters

to Elysium

Apart from them

a-sway the curb

one wry heckler

of an averse universe

spiring a querulous arm

announces the Tremendous

unto his vinous auditorium

of vast unfuture

A universe

to which (dead to the world)

he is ideologically deceased

graduate of indiscipline

post-graduate of procrastination

a prophet of Babble-on

shouts and mutters

to earless gutters

as inattentively

snobs of inertia

turning a dorsal retaliation

on closed entrance

block door-way stairs

with shoeless tiers

of Bandage-footed thins

lifting so daintily

the lusty lice

from their uncovered shins

 

At last

in a lucent grocery